


the day will come when you won't be

by coldbones



Series: what will come of the dust [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Daemons, F/M, Gen, but with daemons, character death (canon), fuck me up with red heads, honestly emma is my love, the shipping is very subtle, this is an emma study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 04:10:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8563492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldbones/pseuds/coldbones
Summary: She buried her hands in his fur and pulled his big head towards him, even as his shape splintered.“Am I?” He asked, with sad eyes and a wet nose.“No,” Emma replied fiercely, and clutched his soft ears. “Them? They’re worth a dime-a-dozen. But you’re worth a whole buck.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> oh no i did it i did the thing. so i'm trash for daemon everything and then this spawned. i recently did an edit about daemons on my tumblr and now this has become a thing that i've committed to do. i started with emma because honestly, i love her, and she was the first i thought of. there will be more info at the end for the curious regarding daemons and the culture here! it's been a long time since i've written anything substantial and anything quite as long as this, so??? uhm. good luck. un-beta'd, and all mistakes are my own and those are the only thing i own. none of these characters, none of these concepts. title taken from the walking dead.

When Emma had the wherewithal, she asked him who he was - even though she could remember him from since she was just a babe.

And Buck, being the kind thing that he was (always fluttering between soft young namesakes and rumbling bumblebees) had considered her for a long moment, the soft end of his long snout twitching. He’d been a creature she had never seen before or again, black and desert sand, lumbering and bigger than any dog.

“Well, I suppose I’m a lot like you,” he had said, wondrously, like this was the first time he’d thought of it too.

Emma knew that everyone had one. A daemon. Men of God spoke strongly of them and of Dust, but Buck never looked like anything she would have to clean up so her pa wouldn’t riot into a sneezing fit. She, as every youngin’ did, knew that everyone had a daemon, and there were Rules. Strong Rules not meant to be broken in the way that some would break others.

She had cupped the corners of his furry, rounded jaw, dragging them down eventually to lift up what reminded her of a narrow log-trunk, and gave the wet tip (bound to be his nose) a kiss.

 

* * *

 

 She grew up on corn fields. She and Buck would race through the stalks, playing hide and seek when there was no one else to join. He would always become these great, stalking creatures that could find her with ease. But he was never insistent on being the likes of them, always making cautious comments on their size. Their look. How awful the folks would think he was, and how that would reflect on her.

“It’s just play,” Buck had said, like he thought that’s what it was. He was never an uncertain creature, but when people saw him in those shapes, he made damned sure they saw him for something else. Made sure they saw Emma for something else.

There was an old tale the wives’ would spread that a daemon set your path: the kind of heart you had was reflected in the manner your daemon carried itself. She wasn’t sure what truth there was to that because she had heard the kind of words wives’ said and didn’t tend to take a lick of them for truth.

Especially when Buck was so careful about how _he_ presented _her_.

Tommy Mongrain’s daemon had picked himself an ugly form, once. He was a hunched back creature with a stripe for a mane, a gnarly set of teeth, and a ghastly bark that sounded like a cackle. And he was _mean_ : he bit poor Buck so hard Emma felt sick, and cried, until Buck became enraged. He was suddenly a towering beast, and Tommy Mongrain and his Della weren’t so brave then. One swipe of a great paw sent Della sprawling, Tommy to his knees from the gust of it.

 _Oh_ , _no_ , she had thought, with the impression of trouble she might be in. But Tommy only cowed like a wounded calf, and scooped up Della, who had changed again, something small she couldn’t see.

“You’re sick n’ wrong, you filthy _pet_ ,” He cussed, to which Buck returned a roar. He and his little scamps ran off, and Buck - between him and Emma, they both felt it. A long exhausted string pulling taut once and then going slack. She buried her hands in his fur and pulled his big head towards him, even as his shape splintered.

“Am I?” He asked, with sad eyes and a wet nose.

“No,” Emma replied fiercely, and clutched his soft ears. “Them? They’re worth a dime-a-dozen. But you’re worth a whole buck.”

 

* * *

 

The first she learned of Dust, she was just a small school child, Buck in her lap as a squeaky, plain looking rat. She was taught that Dust was the True Form of all beasts, and that when they died, that’s what they became.

No one person could ever live without their daemon, and no daemon could exist without their corresponding person.

The first she saw of Dust was when her pa died suddenly. One minute, they were lugging great saddles on Buck and her pa’s daemon, Sadie, and then as she got ready to hunker the long latch of strap in - she burst to Dust. It covered her hands and sank heavily to the ground, the wind catching some and her hair catching the rest. She stumbled back, surprised, her tummy giving the same reaction it did when she hadn’t expected a space to be beneath her foot. Fear, she thought, and then -

“Emma!” Buck cried, and she turned slowly, eyes first on the saddle thunked on the ground, showered with bits of gold fleck….

Her pa died instantly. The doc said his heart had just gone and stopped. It happened, tragically, to some folk. No one could expect it, and her pa was a man of many years. But there had been no indication, and her mother couldn’t handle that.

Emma saw less and less of her after that.

 

* * *

 

To Buck’s great content, his Settling was quite the satisfaction.

One day, he just couldn’t up and change as easily as he did. And then the next, that was it. All she wrote. And he was the most handsome thing Emma had ever seen, and Buck had been so many things.

“You don’t think he’s gone lame, has he?” Her mother asked, as her own Ron sniffed at his considered offspring. Buck seemed to wilt, but with Emma’s confident gaze, he puffed his chest and straightened his ears, lifting his legs just that little bit higher when he walked. A proud gait.

“Well, I’m not.” Daemons tended to reflect, and there was nothing wrong with Emma Crenshaw. “I think he’s just right for me,” and he was.

His back legs were locked, and he was a sleek gun metal grey. He had no tail to speak of, and he reminded Emma of those ordinary barn cats that yowled their days away. But he was so, so much more, and she picked him up to hold him to her heart and whisper all the way she loved him into his finely shaped ears.

“This is who you are,” she told him, and he purred - a beautiful sound that she wanted to take over her head, her heart. Her soul.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s his tail?” Matthew Cullen asked, his eyes full of curious glint. He had a wolf daemon who bore a magnificent coat of dusky browns and deep reds. They met offhand, and he was making the most grandest of efforts in courting her.

(It was working.)

“Snapped off by a boar,” She leaned forward, conspicuously, arms dug in against by the table. Buck had stretched himself out leisurely on the table just above where Matt’s Sally-Anne sat, her black and pink nose poking up at him. He would swat it occassion, but unkindly. In good fun. “Eaten by a mountain lion. Thieved by a dirty man.” Emma narrowed her eyes, let herself smirk. Whispered: “He’s sensitive about it.”

When they both turned to Buck, he yawned and showed off his two stubby, yet sharp lookin’ teeth.

That night, he stretched out along her tummy and her chest, paws kneading at her collarbones. As a right pair, they only courted in public, usually a saloon table. They sought out dances, her and Matty, and they were often dubbed the most darling. She hugged that ugly barn cat to her chest, and rubbed her fingers behind his ears where he enjoyed it most.

“I’ve never seen you so smitten,” he half murmured, half purred, nubby tail wiggling like he was flicking it.

“You’ve never seen me looking at you.” She returned, and kissed that small forehead.

 

* * *

 

Rose Creek was where they built their home, and that’s where Bogue brought it down.

“What kind of man are you?” Matthew had asked, his features swollen with red crossness. By his side, Sally-Anne growled and the sound was so heavy it could be heard beyond the crackling of fire as it snapped and licked.

Emma watched his face, and wished she had never looked away,

It happened fast: Bogue cracked his neck and his crocodile daemon, Jesop, launched forward with such power and speed that she nor Sally-Anne had the time to react. Long jaws clamped down on the wolf’s head, and Sally-Anne _howled_ , falling to the ground with the loudest thud she had ever heard. He writhed as Jesop’s jaws gained ground and tightened, Sally-Anne squealing. There was a crunch…

And then there was Dust.

Matthew moved no more.

More sound: guns, snarling daemons, sobs. But Emma couldn’t recall hearing any of it, couldn’t recall the way the air felt around her except for how it felt like there _was_ none. None available to her lungs or her heart, because there it was. Still on the ground with eyes wide open and dazed.

She cried and cried until Buck had not an inch of dryness to him, and when Matt finished his last breath and they had buried him, buried the others, she woke to something new.

 

* * *

 

“Emma,” came the small voice, like a whisper through her mind. A petting sensation. She reached for softness and found empty spaces wherever her hand fumbled, and she finally gained enough _fear_ to push up and look out.

There was no fur and no whiskers.

Instead, there were long legs, deeply blackened, reaching, and a hunched in body like he was trying to make himself smaller than he already was. And by God, he was just as gorgeous as the first time he had Settled. She had never known a daemon to do what he did, but there he was. In a different shape. A new Settle. There were sharp spots of red to him, and it made him look deadly.

“This isn’t right,” he murmured, and dainty-like stepped towards her hand. Into it. Let himself be caged by her curling fingers. “I’m sorry.”

Emma shook her head. “Don’t be.”

There would be fallout to Bogue, and this was the beginning. Buck cleaned his fangs self consciously, and then boldly.

 

* * *

 

Sam Chisolm had no daemon that she could see of. He was a tall piece of danger, but he was honorable. She could feel it as strongly as she could feel the sun casting its heat across the day. And she, Buck, Teddy Q and his Lady Dee had been on the trail too long to spend time elsewhere.

He was perfect, and he would be right.

Buck crawled up from her bossom to her neck, leg finger-legs touching up to her jaw and staying there: an imposed danger. She would not be taken lightly, and this was his ensurance.

“We’ll convince him,” Lady Dee said surely, her beady sweet eyes offering confidence. She scurried off in Teddy Q’s wake, and when that didn’t work, she stepped in. Sam took Buck into consideration, and she could see it.

Knew he could feel it.

 

* * *

 

Faraday’s Flicka liked to stare. She had veering eyes, different directions, and her nose huffed in fast all the time and didn’t seem to ever exhale. Her big feet made big noise, and it seemed like she threw her mouth around more than Faraday himself did.

She booted his foot, and the drunk swayed in her direction. She muttered something that wasn’t so much of a mutter - “Her daemon,” and then they were both looking. Buck spread his legs out more, and made sure those red hourglasses could be seen.

Flicka spent no energy into keeping up with them, and she often tried to leap up to get closer to Buck, showing her big teeth and swooping those giant ears like she was trying to impress someone.

 

* * *

 

The coyote snuck up on her, but he did not take her down. She went down on account of her own shock, but the attack never came. Buck clung to the edge of her chin with a few of his legs, the front two stuck up in a threatening pose, tiny fangs glinting with venom.

But the ‘yote was smart, and he did get closer, and she realized belatedly that he was a daemon to a man. There were words of people with daemons of the same sex, and she wondered if they were truth.

“Abel,” came a voice, that sauntered into the atmosphere in the same way the owner of it came into the room. The mongrel’s teeth were showing, and she glowered, feeling the hot swell of anger in her gut, wishing he’d get closer so Buck could give him a good go of things. Sam put an easy end to all hostility, though, before she could fancy it, and Buck warned,

“Watch your dirty fucking paws.”

Vasquez and his Abelardo did, and never wronged them henceforth.

 

* * *

 

“Your hands are cold - are you nervous?”

His eyes - Goodnight was his name, she remembered - moved across her, and it took her a moment to realize he was looking for her daemon. She couldn’t see his either, but Emma didn’t make a word out of that. Instead, she bore the gaze and returned her own. Buck crept up her neck, then her face, and settled against her cheek on full display.

What a work of pure art.

Goodnight’s gaze turned wary, and his mouth quirked slowly into some sort of smile after that. Another folk, Billy, stood by his shoulder, a medium creature that reminded Emma of a skunk but not quite slunking around his neck. Something changed in the space between the five of them, and there was an understanding that only they could find.

She was furious, and she would find that burning fire inside of her, and condemn the very space of earth Bogue covered to walk until it opened underneath him and swallowed him, screams and all.

 

* * *

 

She’d never seen such a violent dog daemon until Jack’s Baer came ripping out in the grounds before them before Jack even reached them. The dog snarled into the face of the guilty, frightened goat of one of the Pidgeon Brothers, her maw finding a throat so easily that she felt Buck tense with… something. The non-injured brother aimed a kick at the dog, but she doged, and then a hatchet came flying. The men were downed, and Baer took care of what needed to be done.

“I do believe that bear was wearing people’s clothes,” Faraday offered.

“Not sure which is the daemon though,” Flicka added.

 

* * *

 

“Do you really think this is going to work?” Teddy Q asked quietly, his hands methodically moving over Lady Dee. She was small and had wiry-fur. She flourished in the droughts. She eventually abandoned the attention to mock-thrust herself at Buck, who’s legs came up in warning. Those little tendril-excuses touch the tip of her nose, but they never harmed on another. Lady Dee was ever conscious of where she stepped and how she moved. “There’s seven of them. Bogue’s got God-Knows-How-Many.”

“It’s going to have to,” she replied, expression pinched not for the fire in front of her, but for the men around her.

 

* * *

 

She’d seen the hawk the day before, but she hadn’t the mind to think it was a daemon.

She was a fine specimen, perched quietly on Red Harvest’s shoulder when she approached. She had swooped them that morning, quiet as death, and none of them had been wise to her intentions. They hadn’t been of the bad sort, but if that was the way of will…

The red pair were an asset, and Buck quietly agreed.

 

* * *

 

There was so much gone, and so much left.

Sam had the man cornered, and his croc was hissing, trap jaws open on reflex, throwing herself forward threateningly. Sam’s daemon wasn’t in sight, and again she gone and wondered where the darned beast was, but it wasn’t priority.

Buck moved up slowly, unseen, and sunk his little teeth into the side of Jesop’s hard belly. In her mind’s eye, Emma could see how it worked. The little dents of venom slinking around that cold blood, manifesting and collecting itself into something ugly.

And then Jesop stopped moving, her jaw stuck like that. Bogue felt it, instantly, a pain like no other. And then Emma shot him like that - when he couldn’t look away, and he had to watch his daemon turn to nothing while he felt nothing.

She walked away, with Buck high on her chest, over her beating heart gone wild.

 

* * *

 

“I haven’t changed,” he said on the coat tails of months, perching on a window as she felt her skin grow stir-crazy, stroking her dish towel down her dishes. “I don’t think this is changing.”

“That’s alright,” she reassured, and stretched out her fingers for him to touch, then slowly walk onto. She pressed her cold lips to his tiny body, and again told him: “Them others? They’re worth a dime-a-dozen. But you’re worth a whole buck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Emma's daemon, Buckley, is a silver manx cat. He takes a changing into a black widow after Matthew and Sally-Anne.
> 
> Sally-Anne, as stated, is a wolf.
> 
> Bogue's Jesop is a crocodile, as stated.
> 
> Sam's daemon is never mentioned, really, or described in the same way Goodnight's is but for different reasons. We'll get on that later.
> 
> Vasquez's daemon is a coyote named Abelardo, and he is the only male daemon to a male human mentioned in this.
> 
> Faraday's daemon is a hare, for luck, which coincidentally her name, Flicka, means. 
> 
> Billy has a honey badger named Earla, but that's never mentioned. 
> 
> Jack Horne's Baer is a Rhodesian Ridgeback.
> 
> Teddy Q's Lady Dee is a meerkat.
> 
> Red Harvest's daemon is a red tailed hawk, Pitu, but dubbed Red Wings to match him handsomely.
> 
> I only touched down on few very things regarding the daemon universe. There is plenty more I want to explore, and will, but this is the beginning of my trash. Daemons turn to dust when they die, and generally, folk don't go on long without them. They can, but Matthew didn't. I tried to imply that he died of shock, but it's late and I'm rusty.


End file.
